Mom had quite an intense introduction to Colorado. With the Four Mile Canyon wildfire less than ten miles away from Boulder, we were nearly evacuated on Thursday night. My apartment smelled like campfire for a good portion of her trip. Despite the devastation, we made the best of our time together, shown in this Tabblo and in another Tabblo covering our trip to Rocky Mountain National Park.

I picked her up at the airport in Denver after work Friday. On Saturday morning, we headed to the Boulder Farmer's Market. We spent most of Saturday and Sunday on the road between Boulder and Denver furniture shopping for my apartment. We planned apartment decor, and repeat trips to Crate and Barrel and Boulder's Unfinished Furniture Store, I finally ordered a sofa and chair. After a month and a half, I'm so excited to sit on something other than a fold-up camping chair!

With fresh peaches from the farmer's market, we improvised a delicious meal one evening—sea bass on warm spinach salad with peach-garlic-balsamic reduction sauce.

I bought my first empowering power tool—a drill—and put up curtain rods. Find studs, measure, level, drill, drill hard, and end with completely level curtain rod! I may need a toolbelt next.

Here are a few photos of the Four Mile Canyon wildfire on Monday, taken by Bill, who we met on the Mount Sanitas trail later in the week. Pretty incredible.

We took lots of walks on the Mount Sanitas Valley Trail, which is only a few blocks from my apartment. We even went out on days that were a bit smoky.

I could see the Four Mile Canyon fire on my commute back from work and the haze over the plains was evident.

On Thursday night, with evacuation possible pending a 6 p.m. report from the command center, I climbed Mount Sanitas to see for myself how close the fire was. The slurry planes and helicopters flew right over the trail. These photos from my BlackBerry don't really show as much as I could see in person, but some of the smoke is visible. At the summit, I met one of my boss's friends who had lost his home.

On Saturday, after another early trip to the farmer's market, we went up to Rocky Mountain National Park. View that Tabblo here.

On Sunday morning before leaving for the airport, after only a week at this altitude, Mom joined me for a trip to the summit of Mount Sanitas. It was quite a way to spend our last morning together.

Mom, I can't thank you enough for a fantastic visit! Hope everyone enjoyed this brief overview of our time together in my new home, Colorado. Come visit soon!